Tucker Carlson uses enforcement of food safety laws as occasion to attack trans kids

 John Knefel via Media Matters

On Monday evening Fox News’ top star Tucker Carlson used the federal    



government’s enforcement of food safety laws as an opportunity to attack trans kids, arbitrarily conflating two unrelated issues for the sole purpose of maligning children and the LGBTQ community.

Carlson’s guest was Jeremy Loffredo, reporter for the far-right Canadian outlet Rebel News, which has spread Covid vaccine misinformation and has a history of climate change denialism. Carlson invited Loffredo on to discuss the story of Amos Miller, an Amish farmer who has violated food safety regulations for years. Carlson and Loffredo framed the issue as an example of government overreach in violation of Miller’s “religious beliefs.” In fact, Miller’s farm is a public health risk; the Food and Drug Administration found listeria in his raw milk in 2016 and has been attempting to get him to comply with regulations since then, according to Lancaster Online.

Loffredo argued that the Biden administration was singling out and punishing Miller because his farm doesn’t use fertilizer or gasoline – two commodities whose price has been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Amos has completely eliminated any risk coming from the international or domestic politics of the Biden administration and they're coming after him for it,” Loffredo said.

“Maybe if he promises to put more chemicals in the milk that turn kids trans, they'll lay off,” Carlson responded. As the Daily Beast notes, Carlson’s bizarre comment echoed his friend Alex Jones’ infamous remarks about chemicals turning frogs gay.

The government is seeking $305,065 in total costs related to Miller’s regulatory non-compliance and subsequent refusals to pay his initial fines.

Miller has also associated with a group the Department of Justice describes as part of the sovereign citizen movement, which neither Carlson or Loffredo mentioned. The group, Prairie Star National, claimed to represent Miller in court despite not being licensed to act as court officials, and the judge forced Miller’s actual lawyer to remain on the case. Sovereign Citizens hold to an anti-government ideology that claims its adherents aren’t bound by state or federal law. Members of the movement are typically associated with tax avoidance and the kind of regulatory malfeasance Miller has engaged in, although some in the movement have also been involved in acts of violence directed at state actors.

Carlson incorporated the enforcement action into a broader persecution narrative that he offers his viewers every night. “So they went after gyms, organic farmers, and churches,” Carlson said, referring to the Biden administration. “So maybe they’re against anything that’s wholesome and edifying, that makes you stronger and healthier, and in favor of everything that diminishes you and makes you more dependent.”

“Amos would have been past this a long time ago had Amos not been listening to extreme advice,” Miller’s lawyer told Lancaster Online. “He has this extreme group of people who are very antigovernment. They really bent his ear.”

Carlson has repeatedly claimed that the Biden administration is deploying armed agents of the state to target and jail conservatives for their political beliefs. Most recently, he incorrectly told his viewers that new funding for the IRS would be spent on militarizing the agency to audit and raid the homes of Biden’s political enemies and working-class conservatives. In reality, the funding is directed towards increasing the agency’s capacity to investigate and prosecute extremely rich individuals and corporations for tax avoidance. Approximately 1 percent of the new funding is going towards hiring agents who are allowed to carry arms, according to the New York Times.

This segment is more evidence that Carlson will use any occasion to reverse-engineer an attack on an outgroup, be that trans children, migrants, or any of his other regular targets.

Backlash to professor’s anti-Kavanaugh tweet illustrates the content pipeline from 4chan to Tucker Carlson’s show

TALIA LAVIN & CRISTINA LóPEZ G VIA Media Matters

C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at the Georgetown School for Foreign Service, found herself in the midst of a right-wing media uproar Monday over a facetious tweet about Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The right-wing outrage over the literal interpretations of her tweet perfectly illustrated how a 4chan targeted harassment campaign traveled through the pipeline to become content for Fox News prime-time programming, where host Tucker Carlson framed the tweet as an example of “white genocide,” a common white supremacist trope.  

On September 29, Fair responded to a news article about Graham by writing on Twitter, “Look at thus (sic) chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist's arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

The tweet was noticed by users of notorious anonymous message board 4chan -- a site hospitable to white supremacists and planners of targeted harassment campaigns -- and a user declared an intent to “expose this bitch [Fair] and get her ass fired.” The anonymous poster included a link to Fair’s personal website and blog. The user also doxxed Fair, posting her and her family’s phone numbers found via a web search.

The 4chan thread time stamp indicates it was posted a little before 10 a.m. on October 1. Shortly after, at 11:31 a.m., Fox News tweeted out a story by FoxNews.com reporter Caleb Parke about Fair’s September 29 tweet.
 

A few hours later, the hostile backlash to Fair’s tweet had migrated from 4chan to Twitter, where users recommended calling Georgetown’s campus police and reporting Fair for threatening to castrate white men.

 

Right-wing outlets The Daily Caller and TownHall also jumped on the story (The Daily Caller inexplicably wrote up Fair’s tweet in two different stories, published within 30 minutes of each other). Finally, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson picked up the story on his prime-time show, using the tweet to warn his audience about the white supremacist conspiracy theory of white “genocide.” This is also not the first time Carlson has used a 4chan narrative to fearmonger on his show about the persecution of white people. Carlson often echoes white supremacist talking points on his show, earning accolades online among racists.
 

In another outrage thread about Fair’s tweet, on the anonymous message board 8chan (which is similar to 4chan, but with laxer standards), a user reacted to Carlson’s segment by suggesting its focus should have been more anti-Semitic. The user said Carlson should focus on three sets of parentheses surrounding Fair’s name on Twitter.

The three parentheses, or “echo,” are a white supremacist hate symbol used to identify Jewish people and organizations that anti-Semites deem Jewish-controlled. In response, some Jews and allies have reappropriated the symbol.

This isn’t the first time the outspoken professor has been targeted by right-wing media and far-right trolls.

On September 20, FoxNews.com reporter Parke wrote an article describing Fair as an “anti-Trump Georgetown professor” and characterizing a tweet she had written as a “profanity-laced Twitter rant.”

And last year, white supremacists on 4chan responded in outrage when Fair confronted “alt-right” figurehead Richard Spencer and posted her personal phone number and email address on the message board, declaring an intent to “wreck her shit.”

Fair appeared to be undaunted by the criticism -- and the harassment -- engendered by her controversial tweets. On Monday afternoon, she wrote, “Fox serves only one purpose: mobilize mobs of deplorables to harass people who are woke and sane enough to call the Fuckery the Fuckery.”

Fox News' New Prime-Time Host Tucker Carlson Is Beloved By Neo-Nazis And Misogynists

  MATT GERTZ/media Matters

“Tucker Carlson is literally our greatest ally. I don’t believe that he doesn’t hate the Jews.” -- Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, The Daily Stormer

Following the news that Megyn Kelly had left Fox News for NBC, a commenter at the pro-Donald Trump subreddit “r/The_Donald” -- a key gathering place for the “alt-right” -- posed a question: “WHO DO WE WANT IN HER PLACE?” The subreddit’s denizens quickly coalesced around a single option: Tucker Carlson.

“TUCKER FOR ANOTHER HOUR!” reads the thread’s top comment. “Then start spamming fox with emails and comments letting them know,” wrote one Redditor. “You can’t cuck the Tuck,” commented another.

Twenty-four hours later, the trolls seem to have gotten their way, with Fox News announcing that Carlson will take over Kelly’s 9 p.m. timeslot. Carlson -- a preppy son of privilege who has incongruously become cable news’s most favored host among neo-Nazis and white nationalists -- will now have a prime-time venue to continue giving Fox News a bigger foothold with the “alt-right” audience.

Carlson is a career member of the press who first wrote for establishment conservative and mainstream news outlets like The Weekly Standard, The New York Times Magazine, and New York magazine, and has spent nearly two decades as a host and commentator on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, and finally Fox News. While Carlson has regularly promoted a conservative brand of commentary laced with misogyny, misinformation, and factually inaccurate attacks, many on the left remember him as the bow tie-wearing Crossfire host who Jon Stewart pummeled in his searing 2004 demolition of the program.

But since landing his 7 p.m. Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight in November, Carlson has built a strong following among the worst racists, misogynists, and anti-Semites on the Internet.

Those deplorables love Carlson’s cutting interview style, which seeks not to extract information from guests but rather to embarrass them. Many of Carlson’s victims have included the young women, Jews, and “social justice warriors” who constitute the main perceived enemies of the “alt-right.” They believe that Carlson is helping to mainstream their racist, misogynist worldview.

At "r/The_Donald," Redditors regularly highlight instances in which Carlson “REKT,” “tore apart,” “grills,” or “DESTROYS” his interviewees. A separate subreddit was created in November with the mission statement: “Alpha Male Tucker Carlson routinely plows beta-male SJW snowflakes over on Fox News. This is where we compile his greatest hits.” The subreddit’s official Twitter account is @cantcuckthetuck, a mantra that Carlson’s “alt-right” supporters use to highlight his supposed unwillingness to be “cucked.”

The neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer regularly features videos of Carlson’s interviews under the headline “You Can’t Cuck The TUCK!” The site’s founder, Andrew Anglin, has called Carlson “our greatest ally” and a “machine of ultimate destruction” who “LAMPSHADE[S]” Jewish guests.

The former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke has praised Carlson for pushing back against “Jewish Supremacists” who “believe they are above the law.”

Mike Cernovich, the misogynist “alt-right” media personality who was a key figure behind the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, predicted in November that Carlson would “make FoxNews great again.” He praised the program’s “incredible” impact and warned that the network’s “globalists” could try to shut the show down.

Carlson’s show is also popular on the white supremacist forum Stormfront. “Tucker Carlson is the big star of FOX now in just a very short time,” wrote one commentator after Megyn Kelly’s move to NBC was announced. “And we don't need to guess where he stands. BTW, Carlson is the most dynamic news show host I have ever seen. He is the Donald Trump of talking heads.” Comments like “Lately, Tucker Carlson came out of nowhere and his show is now my favorite” are frequent on the site.

Across Twitter, Carlson's "alt-right" supporters praise his show using the hashtag “#cantcuckthetuck.” And of course, there are memes.

There’s no evidence that Carlson shares the bigoted worldview of some of his biggest fans. But now Fox has a prime-time show that caters to them.

Fox News did not respond to a request for comment.

Below is praise for Carlson’s show from neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and other members of the “alt-right.”

Neo-Nazi Outlet The Daily Stormer: “Tucker Carlson Is Literally Our Greatest Ally. I Don’t Believe That He Doesn’t Hate The Jews.”

Andrew Anglin Runs The Neo-Nazi Site The Daily Stormer. The Daily Stormer is a neo-Nazi website headed by Andrew Anglin that has endorsed Trump and enthusiastically supported his  campaign. The website regularly defends Adolf Hitler, attacks “kikes,” and has a section documenting the purported “Jewish Problem.” [Media Matters, 8/27/15]

Anglin: Carlson “Used To Be The Worst Type Of Bowtie Wearing Faggot,” But Under Trump He Is “A Machine Of Ultimate Destruction.” Anglin reacted to a segment on Carlson’s Fox show by praising him as “a machine of ultimate destruction” in an article on The Daily Stormer. From the November 25, 2016 article:

All of these former cuckolds have had their power-levels raised by orders of magnitude by the Trump coup.

Take Tucker Carlson. This guy used to be the worst type of bowtie wearing faggot. He was literally modeling everything about himself (including his jawline) after king cuck George Will.

Oh but now – this man is a machine of ultimate destruction. [The Daily Stormer, 11/25/16]

Daily Stormer’s Eric Striker: Carlson Is A “Master Of Weaponized Rhetoric.” The Daily Stormer’s Eric Striker celebrated the high ratings of Carlson’s Fox show, calling the host “a master of weaponized rhetoric” who had grown the spine to “go toe-to-toe” with “pathologically lying Jews and dress them down in some striped pajamas live on air.” From a November 26, 2016, Daily Stormer article:

As Andrew Anglin has written, the #TrumpEffect has given Carlson brand new superpowers. He has hung up his bow-tie and grown a spine, and in recent weeks has started making a name for himself as a master of weaponized rhetoric who can now go toe-to-toe with the most brazen, combative, pathologically lying Jews and dress them down in some striped pajamas live on air.

In a short time period, he has crushed professional mud-slinging Heebs like Jonathan Allen, Judeo-Left university administrator/Commissar Michael Roth, pushy Obamacare racketeer (((Ezekiel Emanuel))) and a whole slew of College campus lemmings wielding canned and stale Cultural Marxist talking points. [The Daily Stormer, 11/26/16]

Anglin: “Our Ally Tucker Carlson” Called Out “A White-Hating Jew.” Anglin praised Carlson for doing a “great job” on his show after a segment with guest Erin Schrode, a former Democratic candidate for Congress. Anglin applauded Carlson, writing that he “actually -- literally -- called her out as a white-hating Jew.” In the same article, Anglin also invited readers to “visit” Schrode’s Twitter page to “let her know you take pleasure in seeing her once again defeated by the forces of truth and justice.” From a December 9, 2016, Daily Stormer article:    

This time, instead of taking on the Daily Stormer directly, she fought our ally Tucker Carlson… and lost as bad as she lost to us!

The conversation was insane. She was trying to say that Donald Trump is going to pollute the air by working with oil companies. Or something. Not even clear.

Tucker actually – literally – called her out as a white-hating Jew, saying comparing Trump to a Nazi was hate-speech. And before you call him a cuck, watch the clip – he doesn’t even attack Hitler. He just indicates the obvious fact that Jews defame whites by calling them Nazis, and actually calls this hate speech.

He is calling her out as a Jew. No other way to read that. “Hate speech” is from one race to another – that is what the term means.

Great job, Tuck.

You can visit the Hissing Weasel on twitter and let her know you take pleasure in seeing her once again defeated by the forces of truth and justice. [The Daily Stormer, 12/9/16]

Anglin: “Tucker Carlson Is A One-Man Holocaust.” After Carlson hosted The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin on his show, Anglin enthusiastically called the host “a one-man Holocaust” who had turned his television show into “a fake shower room.” From the December 10, 2016, article on The Daily Stormer:  

Tucker Carlson is a one-man HOLOCAUST!

WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin went on there yesterday and got straight-up LAMPSHADED like her rat ancestors!

This comes after earlier in the week Tucker viciously SOAPED the rat Jew Hissing Weasel!

If Tucker doesn’t chill out on the GAS BUTTON the Jews are going to notice that his television show is nothing but a FAKE SHOWER ROOM. [The Daily Stormer, 12/10/16]

Anglin: “I Could Watch” Tucker Carlson “On YouTube For The Rest Of My Life.” Anglin raved after Carlson hosted history professor Robert S. McElvaine, calling the host “a whirlwind storm” and writing that he “could watch him making that gape face on YouTube for the rest of my life.” From a December 14, 2016, The Daily Stormer article:

Tucker Carlson is like a whirlwind storm!

I sure hope people continue to try to cuck the Tuck. Because I don’t want this ride to ever end. I could watch him making that gape face on YouTube for the rest of my life. Seriously, I hope that in 2040, there is some cuck arguing that against Crusaderbot extermination robots clearing out what remains of the population of the Middle East, and a 70-something year-old Carlson is on YouTube making that same face at him. [The Daily Stormer, 12/14/16]

Angin: “Tucker Carlson Is Literally Our Greatest Ally. I Don’t Believe That He Doesn’t Hate The Jews.” [The Daily Stormer, 12/18/16]

Striker: “I Don’t Know Why These Lying Jews Even Bother Going On” Carlson’s Show. After Carlson hosted Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald, Striker praised Carlson, writing that he had “humiliate[d] Jew Kurt Eichenwald” and that the host is “becoming a bit of a celebrity.” Striker added, “I don’t even know why these lying Jews even bother going on his show.” [The Daily Stormer, 12/16/16]

David Duke: Carlson Stands Up To “Jewish Supremacists”

David Duke Is A Former KKK Grand Wizard And A Radio Host. David Duke is a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and a white nationalist radio host. He is also notorious for spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric. [Media Matters, 10/18/16]

Duke Praised Carlson For Showing “‘Jewish Supremacists' Believe They Are Above The Law!”

[Twitter, 12/1/16]

“Alt-Right” Rape Apologist Mike Cernovich: Carlson Is “Going To Make FoxNews Great Again”

Cernovich Is A Misogynistic “Alt-Right” Media Figure Who Was Instrumental In the “Pizzagate” Fake News Story. Mike Cernovich is an “alt-right” activist and Twitter harasser who operates the website Danger & Play. The site publishes numerous articles, essays, and audio recordings that attack feminists and "SJWs" (social justice warriors) and disputes the validity of date rape claims. Cernovich was one of many “alt-right” figures who weaponized fake news articles to push “pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that baselessly alleged Hillary Clinton’s inner circle was orchestrating a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. Cernovich and his fellow “alt-right” figures’ promotion of the story on social media resulted in “abusive social media comments” for the named pizzeria owners and inspired a man to enter the business with a gun and fire shots while attempting to “self-investigate” the claims. Cernovich has also tweeted white nationalist themes on his Twitter account, including that “diversity is code for white genocide,” “Blacks use guns for murder. Whites use guns to kill themselves,” and “Diversity is bad for national security.” [Media Matters, 8/25/16, 10/9/16, 11/18/16, 12/19/16]

Cernovich On Carlson’s Current Fox Show: “Wow. It’s Exactly What I Told Fox To Design.”

[Twitter, 12/21/16]

Cernovich On Carlson’s 2016 Move To Fox: Carlson “Is Going To Make FoxNews Great Again.”

[Twitter, 11/18/16]

“Fash The Nation” Hosts: “Carve Out A Cable News Exemption” For Carlson’s Show; It’s “Off To A Great Start”

Jazzhands McFeels And Marcus Halberstram Are Co-Hosts Of Podcast On The “Alt-Right” Blog The Right Stuff. Jazzhands McFeels and Marcus Halberstram co-host the “Fash The Nation” podcast on the “alt-right” website The Right Stuff, an anti-Semitic blog that created the “parenthesis meme” in which Jewish names are surrounded by parentheses in order to target them for online abuse on social media. [Media Matters, 8/25/16; Inverse, 9/2/16]

McFeels: “If You Haven't Carved Out A Cable News Exemption For Tucker Carlson's New Show On Fox, I Highly Suggest You Do.”

[Twitter, 11/18/16]

McFeels: “Wish I Could Be Half As Great As Tucker.”

[Twitter, 12/19/16]

Halberstram: “Looks Like Tucker's Show Is Off To A Great Start.”

Tucker Carlson’s website publishes vicious, sexist rant against new ‘Crossfire’ host

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Tucker Carlson’s online publication The Daily

Caller published a review of the new version of Carlson’s old show “Crossfire” on Tuesday that went beyond a bad review and veered into a viciously personal attack against co-host Stephanie Cutter. The review —written by the Caller’s Patrick Howley — called Cutter, variously, a “sociopath,” a “treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption” and an “unmitigated monster.”

“A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House and two sitting U.S. senators,” bemoaned Howley. “A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness, can beat all of us to the front of the Darwinian line.”

The piece’s title, “Crossfire Review No.1,” implies that there will be more reviews to come. “Crossfire” was hosted by Daily Caller editor Carlson and Paul Begala in 2004 when “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart appeared as a guest and notoriously took Carlson and Begala to task for “hurting America” with their tedious back and forth and reduction of every issue to a left-right binary.

The show’s already diminished audience fled and CNN mothballed “Crossfire” until this fall, when the show was rebooted with hosts Cutter and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

“A figure of hatred and dishonesty, a person devoid of any pleasantness or redeeming human value, a treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption, someone incapable of appreciating good art, fine food, or the love or kidness (sic) of her fellow man, can shove and kick and lie her way ahead of the rest of us in this misbegotten society,” Howley continued. “This unmitigated monster can appear before us, talentless, grating, fraudulently tanned, thrusting in our faces the career trophies she earned simply because we didn’t care enough to stop her from getting them.”

The columnist called Cutter “feminism mutated into grotesque cartoon,” comparing her to”Carrie Bradshaw without the literacy,” “Chelsea Handler without the punch lines” and “Kirsten Powers without the prettiness.”

“She leaves us exhausted in our discomfort,” he continued, and demanded to know why Cutter got the job. He was asking, he said, on behalf of “every cute, shy, intelligent young woman rejected by sororities at the fuchsia nails of clipboard-toting middle managers like Cutter,” as well as “every hardworking man forced to report to vaguely qualified female ‘corporate consultants’ in a post-Anita Hill world.”

Cutter was the deputy campaign manager for Pres. Barack Obama’s winning 2012 re-election campaign. She attended Smith University and graduated from Georgetown University School of Law. She has worked at the Environmental Protection Agency, at the White House during Pres. Bill Clinton’s term of office and for former Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

When Tucker Carlson Thought A Senator Soliciting Prostitutes Was "None Of Our Business"

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America

Tucker Carlson has defended The Daily Caller's reporting on Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) patronizing prostitutes in the Dominican Republic as "traditional, straightforward journalism" as that story has come under fire. But when Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was accused of patronizing prostitutes in 2007, Carlson defended Vitter and lambasted the media for digging into what he described as private matters that were no business of theirs.

In their initial much-hyped pre-election bombshell, the Caller reported on allegations from two Dominican prostitutes that Menendez had paid them for sex. Menendez has repeatedly denied the allegations, and the FBI has reportedly found no evidence of their veracity. 

This week the story has unraveled after the Washington Post and ABC News reported that one of the prostitutes who alleged that she had sex with Menendez has recanted her story in an affidavit and claimed that she was paid to lie about the senator. ABC further reported that they also looked into the story last year but decided not to run it because they doubted the women that they and the Caller had spoken to were telling the truth.

As Carlson comes forward to defend the journalistic value of his publication's deteriorating story, it must be pointed out that after Vitter was linked to prostitution and admitted to a "very serious sin", he had no more strident defender in the media than Tucker Carlson, who dismissed Vitter's personal life as immaterial to his performance as a senator and attacked the media for invading Vitter's private affairs and "destroy[ing] his life."

On the July 11, 2007, edition of his since-canceled MSNBC program Tucker, Carlson attacked Michael Rectenwald of Citizens for Legitimate Government, the group that first published the phone records linking Vitter to Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called "DC Madam," demanding of Rectenwald: "How could you justify doing something like this? Why is it your business?"

Carlson said Rectenwald was taking a "sleazy shortcut" and insisted that if it were then-Senator Russ Feingold in Vitter's place, he would be "making the same argument that Russ Feingold`s personal [life] ought to be off limits from creeps and scandal mongers like you who profit from digging into other people's sex lives. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Two days later, on the July 13, 2007, edition of Tucker, Carlson again insisted he'd defend a Democratic senator in the same position as Vitter, saying: "I wish David Vitter were a Democrat.  I wish he were a liberal Democrat.  I wish he were Russ Feingold, because then I would defend him every bit as zealously as I am defending not what David Vitter did, but his right to be unbothered by the rest of us for something that's none of our business." Carlson also specifically targeted the media for hyping the Vitter story:

CARLSON: It's not really the Democrats who are doing it; it's the press. It's us. It's the media. After humiliating David Vitter, putting his wife's picture on television, as many of us have, which is almost indefensible in my opinion, because she did not do anything -- the guy has four kids. We have helped destroy his life. We publicized this thing he did.

As for the criminal aspect of what Vitter is alleged to have done, Carlson dismissed it as not that significant: "It's against the law in the sense that double-parking is against the law. Let's be real here."

Drudge-Hyped Obama Video Turns Out To Be Publicly Covered 2007 Speech

BENJY SARLIN/TPM

Sean Hannity, The Daily Caller, and Drudge Report spent hours hyping a racially explosive secret video of President Obama. But the bombshell clip turned out to be a public speech from June 2007 that was covered by the major networks, including FOX News, at the time.

Excerpts of the open press speech to historically black Hampton University were already easily available (and quickly discovered by reporters after Drudge teased the clip on his website hours before the “new” Daily Caller/Hannity clip even aired). But Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson claimed the video was relevant because it contained additional ad-libbed portions that went off the prepared remarks.

Among the sinister revelations Drudge, Hannity, and Carlson cited: Obama’s use of what they considered an overly African-American cadence to his voice in front of the majority. “This accent is absurd. This is not the way Obama talks,” Carlson said on FOX. Drudge Report teased “THE ACCENT” and “THE ANGER” as scoops.

Hannity, who was a leading figure on the right in promoting Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright as a story in 2008, also pointed to Obama acknowledging Wright as “friend and great leader” at the event. As was widely reported at the time, the two were close until Obama disowned him later that year over his continued inflammatory comments.

The Obama campaign dismissed the video as the work of “Romney’s allies” to distract from his 47 percent comments, although the Romney campaign denied having anything to do with the story and appeared reluctant to discuss it in any capacity.

Despite protestations by Carlson that the media ignored Obama’s speech, CNN’s Peter Hamby pointed out that FOX News aired video of the speech at the time:

BRIT HUME: In the meantime, Senator Obama today said the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse what he calls a quiet riot among black Americans, a riot he suggests is ready to erupt. Obama said African American resentments and frustrations are building, especially, he said, because so many blacks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still displaced 21 months after Hurricane Katrina. Obama warned against conditions similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D), ILLINOIS: Not only do we still have the scars of the riots and the quiet riots that happen every day, but how in too many places all across the country, we haven’t even bothered to take the bullet out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Obama was speaking at a conference of black clergy at Virginia’s Hampton University.

Hannity and Carlson accused Obama of injecting race into the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina. While Obama never mentioned race while discussing the disaster in his speech, he complained that the federal government was slow to waive a Stafford Act requirement governing disaster relief that required the affected area to pay some of the costs of aid that they waived after 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew. According to Obama, this reluctance “tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!”

Obama was hardly the only one complaining about ongoing fights with Congress and the Bush administration over the Stafford Act requirement at the time, however. Then-Congressman Bobby Jindal (R-LA) led a push the same year to revise the law to lessen its funding requirement in circumstances like New Orleans’. On the Senate side, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) pushed hard for more waivers. Sean Reilly, a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, echoed Obama’s complaints almost word for word for a PBS Frontline segment on the Stafford Act.

“Now, one thing that really aggravated us is the federal government waived the match after 9/11, after Hurricane Andrew, after Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii,” he said. “It was hard for us to understand why they were reluctant to waive the match in our case, when we suffered the first and third worst disasters in the American history. Thankfully Congress remedied that, [but] it took too long. Haggling over the match slowed down projects.”

The Economic Conversation Fox News Doesn't Want To Have

by Leslie Rosenberg/Media Matters

After weeks of dismissing news that the economy is improving and downplaying concerns over income inequality, Fox News is now trying to pivot the conversation away from economic growth to focus on deficit reduction, even as economists continue to warn that doing so would be bad for the economy.

Fox News contributor Tucker Carlson and anchor Martha MacCallum argued that the debt "needs to be an issue" in the presidential election, and urged Republican candidates to make debt reduction "the issue" in the campaign. When guest Christopher Hahn argued that debt reduction could wait until the economy is on firmer ground before making our primary focus deficit reduction, MacCallum scoffed: "Oh please!"

 Economists warn that debt reduction should wait until the economic recovery is on firmer ground. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, explained that prioritizing the deficit now "makes no sense": There are no businesses that are going to hire additional workers because the government laid off school teachers or firefighters and we cut back spending on food stamps. Businesses hire more workers when they see more demand for their product. All of these actions that reduce the deficit, either on the spending or tax side, translate into less demand and therefore less employment. In short, those who want to cut the deficit now are lobbying for fewer jobs and higher unemployment. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has argued that a premature focus on deficits would be "counterproductive." This tactic of shifting the debate away from jobs and economic growth to fixate on debt is nothing new at Fox. In the spring of 2010, while economists were arguing that more needed to be done to reduce unemployment and help grow the economy, Fox News insisted that debt was "our number one issue." At the time, Krugman argued that "jobs now, deficits later was and is the right strategy." The effect of that hijacked debate was a credit downgrade that Fox News figures cheered. It's not just economists who say it's not time to shift attention away from economic growth. Voters overwhelmingly say that jobs and the economy should be the focus of this year's election, not the debt. Voters are also more likely to say that the economy is moving in the right direction, rather than the wrong direction; and they are more likely to say that the Republican Party is moving in the wrong direction. All of which could explain why Fox is trying to move the debate in a different direction.

Tucker Carlson and Greta Van Susteren have epic shouting match

By David Edwards/Raw Story

It appears that neither Tucker Carlson or Fox News host Greta Van Susteren are willing to back down in their fight over a report Carlson posted on his website, The Daily Caller.

Susteren had called Carlson a “pig” and accused him of promoting violence against women after he reported Mike Tyson’s comments about the rumor that former NBA star Glen Rice had an affair with Sarah Palin before she was married.

The two clashed in a debate Monday on Susteren’s Fox News show.

“Our view was if he had said those words about any other woman in publish life, about Hillary Clinton, if he said them about the first lady, Madeleine Albright they would be on the front page of The New York Times,” Carlson explained. “Because it was Sarah Palin he was attacking they were being ignored by news outlows that don’t like Sarah Palin.”

“I think you are lying tucker about something,” Susteren charged. “What was written here is not journalism, it is glorifying — let me finish, it glorifies violence on women.”

“It is prima facie repulsive. Do you think we are endorsing this?” Carlson asked.

“Tucker, you’re not a first offender with me. I gave you the benefit of the doubt when six months earlier, you wrote that MILF comment [about Palin],” Susteren shouted.

“These are the words of Mike Tyson. Mike Tyson is a convicted rapist. You had Mike Tyson on your show in April of this year and you asked him nothing about his sexual assault, nothing about his rape, nothing about his attacks against women. You asked him questions like, ‘How long have you been a vegan?’ Then, you sent out a photograph of yourself smiling and laughing with Mike Tyson,” Carlson shot back.

Things degenerated from there, with Susteren saying Carlson “got caught with [his] pants down” and Carlson claiming Susteren “sucked up” to Mike Tyson.

After the interview, Susteren acknowledged on her blog that the interview had not gone well.

“I had hoped that Tucker and I would have a strong debate about violence against women and how women are treated by some in the media and it just deteriorated to the two of us yelling at each other,” she wrote.

Watch this video from Fox News’ On the Record, broadcast Sept. 19, 2011.

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